Time Signatures and The Musical Staff Explained :-)

I want to dive a little deeper into music theory and explanations of the why?! So, one of the biggest things in piano that you will learn is actually how to read and interpret the musical notes on the page. By doing this appropriately you will be able to create the melody you want to hear. This can be difficult but with the right teacher, you can do it!

So, when you take a look at a piece of music. You will notice some lines on a page (AKA: the staff), a squiggly looking symbol on the top (The tremble clef - Right Hand mostly), a backwards c looking sympol (the Bass clef - Left Hand mostly), a fraction? (This is called a Time Signature).

There are a multitude of different looks of musical notes on the page. For all intents and purposes, at this time we will mostly discuss quarter notes, half notes, dotted half notes, and whole notes. I have drawn a demonstration of what they look like below ( I can paint but not draw...so bear with me!)

You may be thinking, "Ok, well now what do I do with them and how do I figure out how many beats that these notes receive". That is where the time signature comes in. The top number tells you how many beats are in each measure and the bottom number demonstrates which note gets 1 beat. Time Signature = the fraction at the beginning of the measures. The easiest and most common time signature is 4/4 time.

So, if it was 3/4 time, then the measure would have 3 beats instead of four.

Later on in the week, I will create a video demonstrating how to tie this information into your playing. Feel free to email me with questions or give me a follow on Facebook for more info!